"THE WEIGH IN" - Male v Female Sports Coverage: Football, Boxing & Cricket in Australia

The Australian Women's Health Magazine put me behind the scenes at the photo shoot for this month's 'I Support Women in Sport' feature story.
Australian representative athletes from their respective fields of Football (aka "soccer" in Oz!), Boxing and Cricket faced-off with their male and female counterparts to discover just how much sports coverage the guys actually got ahead of the girls, despite the fact that in some cases, the girls achieved more in their sport.
The study of sports coverage spanned across Press, radio, TV and Internet. The results, according to this month's WH Mag, revealed the shocking truth of the lack of coverage and support for successful Aussie sports-girls.

Matilda and Sydney FC striker, 19-year-old Kyah Simon, said the highlight of her career so far "is scoring the match-winning goal to win the Asian Cup Final", while Socceroo and Brisbane Roar Captain, 28-year-old Matt McKay, said he thinks the Matilda's are "great", and they [the Socceroo's] "had spoken a lot about how the girls had won one [Asian Cup] and we hadn't won one yet," McKay said.
Sydney-based and 24-year-old lightweight boxer Lauryn Eagle is happy for the Women's Health 'I Support Women in Sport' campaign believing that "women's sport is coming to the rise, especially in combative sports... and that it's a fitness tool for most women," Eagle said.
Middleweight Garth Wood, 33, who recently gave thanks to Anthony Mundine for helping him make his first $1 million, basically nailed it when he said "there's a lot of talent out there and it's sad to see [that] some women have to take a different path just to support themselves," Wood said.
Alex Blackwell, 27-year-old NSW and Australian Cricket representative, agreed with Wood and said that playing elite sport as a female can come with financial pressure.
"It's [playing cricket for Australia] not something that makes me a lot of money... but it's something I love being able to do," Blackwell said.
Blackwell's male opposite, batsman Simon Katich, 35, is a full-time cricket athlete and believes Cricket Australia and Cricket NSW are making solid efforts to involve and promote the girls who he says the NSW lads are actually jealous of.
"I know here in NSW the men's team are jealous of the girls because they pretty much won seven or eight of the last years on-the-trot for the Breakers, so they've been very, very successful... we're envious of their record and it's something we wish we can follow in their footsteps,"
"In NSW the girls are incorporated at training at the SCG, we share our end of season awards night together... I know Cricket Australia are trying to close that gap as well, the girls are now playing in front of crowds at the MCG before Australia play one-day games, Twenty-20's... so I think that's something that's helping the profile of Women's Cricket," Katich said.

COVERAGE RESULTS - Total media across press, radio, TV, Internet.
Football:  Men's Asian Cup loss: 6,942 -- Women Asian Cup win: 4,022
Boxing:   Wood v Mundine: 5,754 -- Eagle v Tai: 155
Cricket: Men's Ashes loss: 25,426 -- Women's Ashes win: 2,780

Employment:
Kyah Simon: Retail assistant at Rebel Sport, administrator at Football Federation Australia
Matt McKay: Professional Footballer
Lauryn Eagle: Personal Trainer
Garth Wood: Professional Boxer
Alex Blackwell: P/T university lecturer, semi-pro cricketer, ambassador for Cricket Australia
Simon Katich: Professional Cricketer